Ramon Garcia, a Dominican national implicated in the 1995 fatal shooting of a patron at a Newark after-hours club, was sentenced to five years in prison today after agreeing to a last minute plea bargain with prosecutors.

John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerRamon Garcia is escorted into court for his sentencing at the Essex County Courthouse in Newark.

Garcia, 38, disappeared after firing into a crowd outside a Sixth Avenue club on Oct. 14, 1995. Two of the shots struck 33-year-old Lance Whitfield in the chest.

Authorities caught up with Garcia a year later, but he slipped away and fled to the Dominican Republic, where he worked for a time as a rural police officer. When American authorities caught up with Garcia in 2000, he went back on the run.

John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerAssistant Essex County prosecutor Robert Grady listens as Colette Hill, sister of Lance Whitfield, speaks before Ramon Garcia is sentenced to prison for killing her brother.

He was finally apprehended in the Dominican Republic in January 2007 and has been in custody ever since.

By pleading guilty to reckless manslaughter today, Garcia received a five-year sentence, with parole eligibility in three. With a year's jail time already under his belt, Garcia could be free in as little as two years. He will be deported back to the Dominican Republic upon his release from prison.

The perceived leniancy of the sentence incensed Whitfield's relatives, who came to court looking for a harsher penalty.

''My brother was killed in cold blood, and he gets away with a slap on the wrist," said Colette Hill, a sister of the victim.

Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Robert Grady also expressed disappointment that Superior
Court Judge John C. Kennedy did not accept his recom­mended seven-year sen­
tence, but Kennedy said the circumstances of the shooting tied his hands because Garcia fired into a mob during a large brawl and did not intend to hurt Whitfield.

"He was scared, he was fearful and thought he was under attack," Kennedy said.

'This is a case of reckless man­slaughter, not a case of aggravated manslaughter or murder, for which the penalties are harsher," he added.

Still, Whitfield's relatives called the sentence a "miscarriage of justice" and disputed any assertion the shooting was random.

''We would have preferred to go to trial," said Hill. "Yes, we could have lost, but we lost anyway."